Don’t recycle plastic To The Economist

Europe and America ship their collected plastic waste en masse to Asia and wrongly assume that it is recycled there. Nothing could be further from the truth: it is dumped.

After China halted imports of Western plastic waste in 2017, it seems that Malaysia will soon follow. As a consequence, plastic waste will go to underdeveloped countries in Africa and Asia with even lower environmental standards, and thus there is a greater chance that these plastics will be dumped and litter the ocean.

In Europe, waste policy has a focus on households separating their waste. As a result, it is expected that much less plastic will disappear in an incinerator. However, these targets and the increase in the related taxes mean that the quality of the plastic waste is becoming increasingly poor.

In terms of carbon emissions, the benefit of plastic recycling compared with plastic incineration is very modest. It would take an average household 60 years of plastic separation to compensate for the carbon emissions of a single plane trip from Amsterdam to Los Angeles.

Burning plastic seems like a mortal sin. But it is better for the environment to set fire to low-grade plastics in efficient incinerators. Machines can use infrared techniques to extract plastic from the residual waste. Because machines take out the good types of plastic, the quality of the plastic to be recycled increases.

Raymond Gradus, professor of public economics and administration, Vrije Universiteit, Amsterdam